In Europe, Trump goes from laughing stock to target of anger with withdrawal from landmark climate agreement
As the foreign press blasts Trump’s “infantile” decision to leave the Paris accord, China loses no time pressing diplomatic advantage
By Janna Brancolini
BOLOGNA, ITALY — Europeans this week have gone from being amused by U.S. Pres. Donald Trump to outraged, with the press calling his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement an infantile, immoral and hypocritical move that brings with it the end of 100 years of American influence abroad.
“The ‘American century’ has ended with Donald Trump,” the Italian daily La Repubblica wrote in an op-ed following Trump’s decision to withdrawal from the landmark treaty, which was brokered in 2015 to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.
Much of Western Europe seems to share that sentiment, with journalists noting that the move came exactly 100 years after the U.S. joined the Allies in World War I.
The French daily Le Monde wrote that Trump had pursued a version of America envisioned by Charles Lindbergh in 1940 — an “infantile” regression that will cost America its unique place of influence in the world. The British Guardian described the withdrawal as “an inexplicable abdication of any semblance of responsibility or leadership.”
“It now seems inevitable that the history books will view Trump as America’s worst-ever president,” the Guardian op-ed continued.
Following Trump’s first trip abroad, many Europeans were shaken but trying to maintain a sense of humor as they noted that he seemed more comfortable in the company of Middle Eastern despots than America’s closest allies in the G7.
Trump had left the summit “undecided” as to whether he would uphold the U.S.’s commitments on climate change. Many on the Continent assumed that, as someone who seems to relish being the center of attention, he was simply creating a bit of drama and suspense before announcing that the U.S. would stay in the agreement.
The Trump administration had already come under fire for appointing Scott Pruitt, a climate change-denying lawyer who has represented some of the country’s worst polluters, to run the EPA, the federal agency charged with protecting the environment. It also implemented new rule and regulations that if continued will make it impossible for America to meet its initial, non-binding Paris climate commitment for 2025.
In response, U.S. states, cities and corporations pledged to continue developing the green economy regardless of Trump’s decision, with California in particular vowing to lead the fight against climate change even if Washington wouldn’t.
All of this is to say the federal policy implications of staying in the Paris Agreement would have been largely non-existent.
The decision facing Trump was whether to at least pay lip service to standing with America’s allies, or to commit a massive diplomatic error that would open the door for China to cozy up to Europe and try to improve its global standing.
Only a “toddler at play time” who “smashes things and refuses to clean up” would pursue the latter course, the Guardian noted.
Whoops.
Indeed, Trump chose to give a middle finger, as the Guardian put it, to the rest of the world and to future generations.
China was quick to capitalize on the decision, which offered a propaganda windfall to a country facing an environmental crisis of its own making. Chinese leaders used the opportunity to portray themselves as the ascendant world super power as the United States’ leadership falters.
“Despite the U.S. withdrawal, China, one of the first countries to ratify the Paris pact, will stick to the commitment to fulfill its Paris pledges, as Premier Li Keqiang stressed in Berlin on Thursday during his visit to Germany,” China Daily wrote in an editorial.
“Just as [former Pres. Barack] Obama said on Thursday, ‘even in the absence of American leadership; even as this administration joins a small handful of nations that reject the future,’ the rest of the world, including China, will do even more to protect for future generations the one planet we’ve got.”
Every nation except Syria and Nicaragua had signed on to the global pact.
During his speech announcing the withdrawal, Trump described the Paris accord as “very unfair at the highest level to the United States” and accused China and India of reaping unfair advantages from the agreement.
“We don’t want other leaders and other countries laughing at us anymore,” he said.
La Repubblica was quick to counter.
“Nobody has ever ‘laughed’ at America,” it wrote it in its op-ed. “If the world laughs, it laughs at Trump, not America.”
At least Trump seems to have gotten what he wanted; by pulling out of the Paris Agreement, he has engendered anger instead of just ridicule.
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